THE PROTON: ITS UNTOLD STORY

We have all heard of the proton. It is one of the standard atomic particles. The proton and the neutron make up the nucleus of the atom. This means that it is one of the basic building blocks of everything we know in the universe, everything! This makes the proton pretty important in our universe. Just some quick fact/information about the proton;

Ernest Rutherford is credited with discovering the proton in 1911.

In the Standard Model (particles) it is a Baryon and comes under the category of Fermions.

I put this info about the proton being a Baryon in the category of Fermions for two reasons; to introduce the “Standard Model” because we will be talking about that a lot, and to show how complicated things can get.

Here is where it gets good, how many protons are there?

The standard answer that we have all been taught for years is one, there is only one proton. This is not exactly true. There are at least three different protons and I would argue that there are four.   

The current information associated with the standard model is that the proton is made up of three first generation quarks. The first generation quarks are the “up” quark and the “down” quark. The ‘up’ and ‘down’ quarks are all that we need to be concerned with for this piece.

As I just stated there are three quarks in the proton. But since there are only two quarks that are being used one of them must be doubled, it is the ‘up’ quark. So, the proton is made of two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark. It turns out that there are a whole bunch of rules that need to be followed for combining quarks into particles, thank you quantum physics. One of the rules is commonly referred to the exclusionary principle and it basically says that I cannot have two of the same quarks combined in a particle. But, the proton has two ‘up’ quarks so how is this combination allowed in the proton…. Well the current theory is that all quarks come in three colors; red, blue and green. These are not “real” colors, rather they are assigned identifiers. And, since there are three colors of quarks in order to avoid exclusionary conflicts any particle made of three quarks must be color neutral. In the case of the proton we will say that color neutrality is obtained by having one quark of each color.

So, when we use the rules with what we have we come up with the following protons…. (Note that “protons” is plural, and for individual identity purposes each proton has been named by the color of the ‘down’ quark.)

Blue Proton => DOWN blue, UP red, UP green

Red Proton => DOWN red, UP green, UP blue

Green Proton => DOWN green, UP blue, UP red

Each of these three protons are color neutral and they do not have the same ‘up’ quark, they comply with the rules.

In looking at our universe and making things work, the simple statement would be that all three of these protons behave exactly the same. So, how do we know this? We do not. A red rose is not a yellow rose and not all roses are the same as there is the rose bush, the climbing rose and many other kinds of rose plants. I also believe that a logic argument could be made that since there is a required color neutrality and exclusionary principle they cannot be the same.

Let’s convolute this even more. In the standard model there is a whole class of particles called “Baryons.” All Baryons are made up of three quarks. We already have three varieties of the proton so this should be the close of the matter. Not so fast. There is also the “Delta+” Baryon made up of two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark just like our proton. The difference is that the Delta+ Baryon has about a 30% greater rest mass than the proton. In other words, the Delta+ Baryon is the same as the Proton, just more rest mass. (This relates to a really great question, how does a standard proton obtain a 30% greater rest mass?)

Let’s toss one more little interesting piece of information into this mess; a free Proton has an estimated half-life of about 10³² years, which is a one followed by 33 zeros. For perspective the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, for comparison 13.8 X 10⁹ years old. The Delta+ Baryon, the proton that isn’t a proton, it has a lifetime (not a half-life) of 0.6 X 10^-23 seconds. This is 23 zeros between the ‘6’ and the ‘.’.      

Let me list the above times for a better visual comparison:

The free Proton has a half-life of 10³² years,

And the Delta+ has a lifetime of 10^-23 seconds.

This existence difference due only to a 30% energy difference does not make any sense, it is just illogical.

One more piece of information, the neutron which is the partner of the proton in the nucleus of all atoms that make up everything in the known universe is also made up of three quarks, two ‘down’ and one ‘up’ (flip one of ‘up’ quarks in a proton to a ‘down’ quark and you have a neutron. There is a 0.1% energy difference between a neutron and a proton. Guess what, a free neutron has a half-life of about 12 minutes. This too is a long, long way from the proton’s half-life. And guess what happens when a neutron decays, it becomes a proton and a few other things.

Let’s put all of this together. You have a free neutron; free in this case means it is out there all by itself and is not part of the nucleus of any atom. In about 12 minutes this neutron is going to become a proton, and a few other things, and doing this it is now going to basically live forever. Unless, something happens to it and it picks up about 30% more rest mass and becomes a Delta+ baryon (proton), then it is going to die in a blink of an eye and become a regular proton again, which it what it was before it changed and died. Why would nature do this, what purpose does all of this serve?

I just read a passage where a physicist said that he likes consistency in numbers, and that there was an additional “beauty” when numbers align. With respect to the standard model of particles as I recall he was talking about how the number three was consistent in so many things associated with this model. Well, here are a couple of more threes. I just showed that there were three varieties of protons as well as three states for the proton. Let’s randomly put the varieties of protons identified above with a state;

Blue Proton => DOWN blue, UP red, UP green: assigned to the bound state in an atom.

Red Proton => DOWN red, UP green, UP blue: assigned to the free, unbound state.

Green Proton => DOWN green, UP blue, UP red: assigned to the Delta+ state.

Why did I do this, because it is impossible to say that this cannot occur. There are three distinct varieties of protons as shown above. There are also three specific states that the proton can be in. So tell me why there cannot be some kind of matchup between proton variety and states. And, this is just two more incidents of the number three, which according to some should be a beautiful consistency.

Something to think about, and a few things that should be readily explainable.

INVESTIGATING PHYSICS

I am here to investigate physics. What does this mean, “Investigate Physics?” To me it means digging deeper into current important topics of today’s physics and asking questions to make sure that everything is consistent. What if we have not been told the whole story about what is going on with today’s physics? What if there are problems with our current physical view of things and the problems are just being ignored and/or swept under the carpet?

Why would I want to investigate physics? Physics has been involved with my life for a long time, both professionally and personally. Professionally, I did not work in physics, but I used physics in my careers. Personally, I think physics is the greatest science in the world and I have been reading and following the biggest current physics topics for a number of years. As a result of the time I have spent learning more about today’s physics, I started developing a lot of questions. So I started researching to look for answers. When I could not find answers to my questions this led to even more questions and more research and digging. In other words, I have already started investigating physics and discovering lots of inconsistencies in the information being given to us.

There is also the issue of public relations for today’s physics. For years I/we have been reading about and heard about all of these great and wondrous things that are going on in physics today. There has been so much talk about string theory, unification theories, discovering what dark matter and dark energy are, and explaining the universe to us. So, where are all of the explanations for these things? I am very much interested in hearing about the next steps that are going to occur in our universe. A unification theory will hopefully give insight on how our universe formed without anti-matter thus allowing us to come into being. We have been waiting for years and have gotten nothing.

So who am I to think that I can investigate today’s physics? Actually, I think I am uniquely qualified to do this. Let me explain. I was an investigator on a police department for almost 20 years before graduating with my undergraduate physics degree. At the time of my graduation I was also married and raising a family with a wonderful woman whom I am still married to. In other words, I was studying physics while doing a whole bunch of other life things. So, physics was not the central point of my life. Also, I was in my mid-forties when I graduated and was in the process of a career change, but still doing investigations. And again, with the career change, physics was a tool in my work life, but it was not a central point in my life. Things stayed this way until my retirement a few years back.

Retirement a few years ago started a new stage in life for me. Physics was still not a central point in my life but the time I spend reading and learning more about physics significantly increased which in turn increased the amount of time I spent on physics. I already had some questions, so this extra time spent on learning more about today’s physics ended up causing me to have a lot more questions on a lot of additional things. In retirement, I had the time to do more research looking for answers. Unfortunately answers to my questions were not being found. It is a funny thing, when you have a question and you cannot get an answer for it this leads to a lot more questions. This is where I am at today.

I think that it is easy to see that the universe we live in is truly a wonderful and exciting place. Even from our confined location on an average planet rotating around an average sun in an average galaxy within our universe it is not hard to see and imagine the wonders around us. Physics is the key to learning about all of these wonders. I believe it always has been, and it always will be. So, the people who made the decision on their own to work on finding the keys to the universe kind of have the responsibility to make sure that they are actually looking for the keys. They must be asking themselves lots of questions about all they find and think they have discovered. They have to make sure that what they are working on will actually do something to move life forward. They have to make sure that they accurately answer all questions, and that they understand all of their answers. Understanding is the first step toward heading in the right direction. In other words, today’s physicists, scientists and mathematicians have to be experts in their work instead of advocates for their work justifying what they think might be right.

Am I the right person to be a “Physics Detective?” Only time will tell. However, if I have questions that cannot be answered, there has to be others that also have the same questions. So, let’s ask the questions and see what happens. If I am wrong, so be it, no harm no foul. If my questions are valid, let’s see where they can lead us.